Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Side of Paradise, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age
Friendship and Masculinity
War, Modern Life, and Generations
Money and Class
Love and Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
Amory’s shirt stud bruises Isabelle’s neck, and she becomes angry at him when he laughs. He realizes that he does not actually love her, but still wants to kiss her in order to be a “conqueror.” Amory tells Isabelle that he plans to leave in the morning. She calls him conceited and says he talks about himself too much. When Amory is upset, he wonders if it is just his vanity that is hurt. Amory leaves early the next morning without seeing Isabelle.
Amory’s immediate indifference to Isabelle echoes his rejection of Myra St. Claire when Amory was young in Minnesota. His disgust with women as soon as he has succeeded in wooing them, or has “conquered” them, suggests not only Amory’s troubled method of romantic attachment, but also his misogyny. It seems that Amory’s vanity is hurt and that this is because Isabelle’s accusation (that he is conceited) is true, and Amory is very sensitive to criticism.
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Literary Devices
Amory returns to Princeton early in September because he failed a class in the spring and needs to take a make-up exam. Amory struggles to study conic sections in math and does not care enough to admit that he does not understand. After the end of his affair with Isabelle, Amory feels disinterested in academic success, even if it means being removed from The Princetonian and not being chosen for senior council. A week later, Amory finds out that he failed his exam.
Amory’s refusal to study for his exam illustrates his stubbornness and tendency toward self-destruction. It seems almost as if Amory does not want to succeed in order to free himself from the rigidity of the social conventions to which he has conformed.
Themes
After failing the exam, Amory becomes aimless and idle. Alec tells him that he was lazy, but Amory feels that he was meant to fail and revert to the “fundamental Amory”—who is lazy, “rebellious,” and “imaginative”—after two years of success and conformity at Princeton. Amory’s father, Stephen, dies, and Amory returns to Lake Geneva for the funeral. He feels unemotional about his father’s death but is worried that his family’s wealth is dwindling because of bad investments in oil.
By denying himself conventional success, Amory is embracing the “bizarre streak” that he previously identified as preventing him from ever being a true “slicker.” After his father’s death, Amory’s anxiety about his family’s money becomes persistent throughout the rest of the novel, as Amory’s declining class status reflects his further retreat from a “conventional” middle-class lifestyle.
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Amory visits Monsignor Darcy at Christmas and admits that he wants to leave college, and that Kerry has asked him to join the army with him. Monsignor Darcy discourages him, saying that he is developing naturally and has become less vain. Monsignor Darcy explains to Amory the difference between a “personality” and a “personage”: the former is a consistent and unyielding entity, while the latter gathers experiences and learns from them. Darcy convinces Amory that he can have a fresh start, and Amory returns to Princeton feeling revived. At Princeton, Amory spends much of his time reading literature and writing poetry, and he withdraws from the social scene. Kerry leaves college to enlist in the army, which Amory admires.
The introduction of the theme of “personality” versus “personage” clarifies Amory’s reversion to his “fundamental” self: it is clear that Amory is still a “personality” whose core nature is overriding his developments. It will take Amory much of the rest of the novel to truly become a “personage” and stop reverting to his “fundamental” self in moments of distress. By returning to his interest in poetry and literature, Amory further retreats from conventionality and embraces the idiosyncrasy he previously tried to drill out of Tom.
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Literary Devices
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Amory and Fred Sloane go to New York with two girls. At a bar, all except Amory are drinking, and Amory thinks he sees a pale, deathly man with curling pointed shoes watching him. They go up to one of the girls’ apartments, where Amory thinks he sees the same man, who is the devil. None of the others see the man and think Amory is hallucinating or drunk. Amory runs out of the apartment and down an alley. He shouts into the night, asking the spirit who is haunting him to send “some one stupid,” and suddenly the face of Dick Humbird appears to him. When Amory returns to Princeton, he and Tom are reading together when Tom sees the devil again behind Amory. Amory then recounts the events of the previous night.
Amory’s vision of the devil is a strange moment in the novel that is quite distinct from the rest of the material. At first, it seems that the devil is a hallucination, but later, when Tom sees the same figure, it seems that something otherworldly may be occurring. What Amory truly sees is never clarified, but it is notable that it is the face of Dick Humbird that appears when Amory asks for comfort in the form of “some one stupid”: the memory of Dick seems to haunt Amory unconsciously.
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